"Home invasions" is not a term you see used in common parlance in the UK at all. It is in the US. We talk of burglaries they talk of "home invasions" and there is a big difference in what the two imply IMO.

At least some US citizens clearly feel the need to protect themselves from "home invasions" when really they would probably be better served by letting the police deal with a burglary after the event (because I am sure that is what most home invasions really are).

As you say the risk of accidental shooting is probably far greater than that of home invasion and for that reason even if:



You would still justify not having a gun because it was more dangerous keeping one around despite this. I assume here the "home invasion" was a burglary and not anyone doing something worse that would constitute something to be labelled as a "home invasion" where they would have shot you in your bed before you unlocked the gun-safe which is where you would have to keep it to prevent your kids playing cops and robbers with live ammo.

BTW I read a case not so long ago where parents were fighting to get a life jail sentence overturned for a minor who had been an on-looker when a kid of about 12 shot his stepfather dead using the "family" gun.

IMO it comes out of the same kind paranoia that makes some US citizens think they have to arm themselves to protect themselves against their own government.

Like I said, in the US if someone is kicking your door in at 2am then they are risking being shot. That automatically means that there is a more serious intent in the US than there is here.



I can't say I agree with that premise either here or in the US.

If someone's trying to steal your things from your house then over here the reaction will be outrage and a strong desire to beat the hell out of the lowlife for trying to steal your stuff. In America the reaction will be to reach over for the shotgun and possibly blow them away.

I agree that the most sensible course of action is to barricade yourself away and call the police to let them deal with it. But part of that assumes a police response time of around 5 minutes. But there will be many places in the USA that you'd be lucky to get a police response within 30 minutes for a major emergency.



I agree. I'm an anti-gun guy and this is the way I think. I also think that there's a huge advantage to the "home invaders" in that they know exactly what is going on and are prepared while the homeowner is scared, panicking, frightened for their family and isn't sure whether it is someone breaking in or whether the wind has just smashed something against your door.

I also think that people don't handle guns in real life like they do in movies. I think most people would be shaking so bad they wouldn't be able to open a gun safe, never mind getting it out and using it.

My friend was totally convinced that he would be able to shoot someone who was threatening his family. I honestly don't think anyone knows how they would react in those situations until they are in them. I think that most people would completely freeze in situations like that.



The most ridiculous thing about protecting yourself from the government is that people have no right whatsoever to bear arms against the police. The easiest way to kill yourself is to reach for a gun in front of the police.

That was my first thought. What are they going to do when a teacher snaps after taunts from students?

Just the fact that you are 100 times more likely to be killed from arms fire in the US than here shows that an absence of guns is a more effective solution than giving them to everyone.

Or when a student attacks the gun carrying teacher and manages to relieve them of their gun?



It should be obvious whenever you introduce guns anywhere there is an increased likelihood they will be used for murder.

So introducing them into to schools is bound to increase the chances of another shooting.

The counter argument the pro-gun lobby will no doubt put is this is the lesser of two evils on the assumption any murders from a rouge teacher or pupil will likely be a lower order of magnitude than what we saw recently.

I can't say I can see how that follows. A trusted member of the staff wouldn't be challenged from walking into the school gym or an assembly.

In any case this kind of logic does my head in. It's like the death penalty. Yes they get it wrong sometimes but it's a price worth paying is the argument. Presumably when it doesn't happen to you and yours. Same thing here. Much hand wringing when one does go off the deep end but hey, the incidence of rouge teachers will still mean fewer deaths than leaving them unarmed will be the logic.

How about just doing the utmost to make schools secure?

The argument from the gun lobby is that the reason schools are targeted is because they are gun free zones.

So during a school shooting there are one or two shooters in a building with 1,000 unarmed people. The shooters then have about 5 or 10 minutes to shoot as many people as they can before every cop in the city comes.

The argument is that if a shooter knows that there could be a dozen armed teachers and staff throughout the building then the schools won't be the easy targets they are at the moment. They think that if teachers carry guns then either the school shooting doesn't happen or the shooter is shot before they get the chance to kill too many people.

There ARE positives behind this argument. But IMO it's pretty convenient for the gun lobby that the solution to gun crime is more guns. I think there are many problems with giving teachers guns as well though. Not least that fear that it will instill in children that they are so in danger of being shot that their teacher needs a weapon. Then there's all the accidents that will happen, the odd teacher shooting and the fact that school principals are going to hold off from firing a bad teacher who happens to also be carrying a gun every day.



TBH the schools in America are way more open than the schools in Britain. Just driving past a modern British school and they look more like prisons than they do a school. Again a massive over-reaction because a few kids have been abducted from schools so every school in the country needs 10ft high fences around the whole perimeter of the school grounds.

I used to be in the car every morning when my friend dropped his youngest off at elementary school. Before Newtown there'd be about 5 cars dropping off kids at the time we were there. After Newtown the car park was pretty much packed because parents were all dropping the kids off. More kids will have died in car accidents caused by everyone driving their kids to school than will ever be killed in school shootings.

The American attitude to guns never ceases to amaze me.

A few years ago I was a member of a USA-based photographic forum the membership of which I would estimate to be about 95% American.

One day someone (no, not me) posted an image which, in Britain, would probably have been described as "a bit cheeky" or maybe even "risqué". There was, shock horror, a hint of female nipple on show but the image was (IMO anyway) tasteful, beautifully lit and by no means explicit.

The proverbial hit the fan fine style. There were complaints to the moderators, calls for the poster to be banned immediately indefinitely, howls of anguish, their standards of propriety were being outraged by a deranged pervert, endless discussions on what did or didn't belong on a "decent" forum, etc, etc.

A couple of days later some guy posted a pic of his new Smith & Wesson, or Sig, or Remington or some such. This proved to be a hugely popular thread with members extolling the perceived virtues (i.e. killing capability) of different models and queuing up to post pictures of their armouries and drooling over eachothers' penis substitutes (if you'll forgive the pop psychology). It was what I believe is now referred to as "gun porn" but I hadn't heard the term then.

There was no way through and I left without even trying.

Almost exactly my experience with the Utah artists that I correspond with, very religious (obviously) and most fo them graduates of the Brigham Young University so also intelligent (apparently), but try and take away their right to own and carry weapons and the level headed discussions turn very nasty very quickly, I thought they were all such peace loving people



I haven't yet gone so far as to ask what their religion thinks about the fact that they so desire to be armed because religion is never raised as a topic, their style of mormon-ism doesn't seem to include the hard sell that we see in this country,.

Well the issue is that they genuinely believe it is their right to own firearms. Whatever you or I or anyone else thinks about owning guns they see it as their right. If I tried to take away your right to vote or your right for you to have a fair trial I imagine you would turn nasty quickly too.

Spot on. Even the police in the US aren't that well trained in firearm use in the US (SWAT excepted). There are plenty of examples I've seen on the Police Camera Action type TV shows of armed US police panicking and loosing off rounds in the general direction of a suspect. Sometimes hitting bystanders and even their own colleagues. This is also backed up by a couple of friends who live in the US.
Wasn't there a case in the US recently about some bystanders being hit by someone who was trying to shoot a gunman and missed?

LGJM is probably right when he talks about US burglars being more likely to be armed than UK ones, but I'd suggest that situation has arisen due to the likelihood of both police and homeowners being armed. Something which is highly unlikely in the UK. If I was a burglar in the UK, I'd do just as Jerry's burglar had. A snatch and run. If I was a burglar in the US I'd make sure I was armed and immediately targeted and neutralized the homeowner. Either by threatening them and tying them up or shooting them if they offered resistance. Then I'd take everything I could.

I believe it is my right to beat small children. Do you have children? I wish to punch them in the face. Pass them this way, it's my right.

And if you believe you have that right you won't be arrested after punching a kid in the face, you will be detained and sectioned under the mental health act.

The reason that Americans believe they have a right to bear arms is because they do have the right, courtesy of the second amendment of the US constitution.

There are plenty of "Him's" in the USA who think that have the right to be stupid like you do. I witnessed a conversation where a big, bald Him called Earl insisted that when he went to Florida he was perfectly within his rights to travel with a gun under the passenger seat. Two concealed carry licence owners told him that was against the law and he'd be arrested for doing that.

My friend was one of those people. He knew most (if not all) of the responsibilities of carrying a gun and took it very seriously. He is completely against idiots who think they have the right to do stupid things just because of a vague understanding of the constitution.

This is where the whole gun ownership thing starts to crumble like a sandcastle in heavy rain, American citizens have the basic constitutional right to bear arms but my understanding is that that right was granted 200+ years ago when large areas of that country only had the vaguest of law enforcement and it was literally down to the individual citizen to enforce state and federal law, as they saw fit - its possible to argue that the same situation does not exist now and that citizens should be prepared to hand over law and order entirely to their police forces in which case guns would have to be much more strictly controlled, its possible to try and argue that, but not practical because no individual wants to be the first one to give up their weapons.

As well as the Utah artist I also correspond from time to time with a writer who lives in California, she was a pilot in the air force and is still a reservist and is what could fairly be described as a gun-a-holic but like your friend is full of advice to others via a gun ownership blog of the responsibilities of keeping guns - and there are a lot of people like them who do take it all very seriously, swapping advice on maintaining their weapons, on choosing them in the first place, and on what are the best ways to practice using them, there is no criticism of the constitution with these people and the amendment to bear arms will never be repealed, America will become a communist state before they give up their second amendment and their attitude towards state and federal control has not changed much in the 200+ years since the constitution was drawn.
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Of course when a high school shooting occurs they all shuffle around shaking their heads and muttering stuff about it being the person that did the shooting and not the gun, but still the argument about the right to own guns is absolute and trying to compare the situation in this country with theirs is like comparing chalk with cheese and is as pointless and unproductive as that would be.